Archive for October, 2004

Legoland and RFID

paulballen — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 18:39:28 -0700

Here's an interesting article on how Legoland Denmark is using RFID on wristbands to help parents keep track of their children. In the next few years companies will spend billions on RFID for supply chain management, potentially saving hundreds of billions of dollars in costs, according to the Yankee Group.

As passive RFID tags become ubiquitous, some contemplate the Big Brother scenarios and the continued erosion of privacy. But what positive benefits can we anticipate which may improve our quality of life and the efficiency of the marketplace?

I own several books on the history of the bar code. Can someone recommend a book for me on how RFID will impact business and life in the coming years?

United Online Acquires Classmates

paulballen — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 21:10:41 -0700

United Online is paying $100 million in cash for Classmates, the leading service for re-connecting people to their high school friends (in a way, it's a social networking site--it just doesn't utilize the six degrees of separation theory the way the newer services do).

United's market cap is in the $500 million range. It is apparently trying to purchase more subscription services. Earlier this year it purchased About Web Services, an Orem-based hosting company (formerly known as Freeservers). Both Classmates and About Web Services have huge numbers of users. The question is will United Online know how to run and grow these businesses, or will they fail to execute? Time will tell.

Google Passes Yahoo in Market Cap

paulballen — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 12:10:32 -0700

I've been predicting recently that Google would pass Yahoo's market cap by the end of this year. It happened today. Here's a Reuter's story. Microsoft is worth $300 billion. Google is worth $50 billion. Yahoo is worth $48 billion. It's a very interesting race. And its great for consumers. Thanks Google for "not being evil" and for forcing other companies to play by your rules and provide more and more value to consumers.

Shopping.com IPO

paulballen — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 08:10:49 -0700

Shopping.com has raised more than $124 million in its IPO, pricing shares at $18, after upping its range to $16-18. The Israel-based company is the 4th largest shopping destination online. It had $42 million in revenue and $3.8 million in net income during the first six months of 2004.

I read yesterday that all Internet IPOs this year are trading above their opening price. It's definitely survival of the fittest.

Connect Magazine

paulballen — Sat, 23 Oct 2004 13:27:52 -0700

Connect Magazine (which covers the Utah high tech scene) invited me to write a column every month for their excellent publication. My first article comes out next week. It's about the importance of angel investors. Upcoming topics include: tools for 21st century entrepreneurs and search engine marketing. Subscribe to Connect.

Let me know what you would like addressed in future issues.

Utah 100--Fastest Growing Companies for 2004

paulballen — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:40:09 -0700

Mountain West Venture Group honored the 100 fastest growing companies in Utah yesterday at the Grand America Hotel. Senator Bob Bennett gave a keynote speech about entrepreneurship and creating jobs. He complains that most senators are lawyers and don't even understand something as straightforward to a small business owner as a K-1 form and the tax rates associated with partnerships and S-Corporations. As a former businessman, he has tried to raise their awareness of small business issues.

MyFamily.com, with more than $100 million in revenue last year, was noticeably absent from the top 100 list. I can only surmise that the company didn't want to provide detailed financial information before its IPO. (This is just my personal conjecture.) It should be on the Inc 500 list which is just coming out,

UVSC Lectures on Internet Marketing

paulballen — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 22:10:24 -0700

I'm not teaching Business Formation at UVSC this semester (Kent Millington is the instructor this semester), but I'll be giving lectures on internet marketing on Nov 3, 10, and 17. If you want to attend as my guest, please email me for more details.

UITA Hall of Fame

paulballen — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 16:10:23 -0700

My favorite annual event in Utah is the UITA Hall of Fame dinner. Last night the latest inductee into the Utah Information Technology Associaton's Hall of Fame was Kevin Rollins, CEO of Dell Computer. The evening was grand.

The UITA Hall of Fame now includes:

Alan Ashton, WordPerfect (1999)
David Evans, Pioneer in Computer Graphics

Skype: Increasing Returns

paulballen — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 02:10:14 -0700

More than 28 million people have downloaded Skype, the free voice over IP service from the makers of KaZaA. I use it to talk with web developers and business partners. We haven't yet used the free conference calling service (up to 5 people simultaneously). For that we use www.freeconferencecall.com. There is no added fee for this service--every participant just pays a normal long distance rate. This is a super convenient service.

What I'm excited about today, is SkypeOut. I paid 10 euros to get an account with SkypeOut which lets me call any phone in the world. For most countries my billing rate is .017 euros per minute or about 2.15 cents per minute. Today I called people in California and Canada at this rate. The voice quality was excellent.

I'm blogging to give Skype this advice: please allow me to import all the phone numbers in my Outlook file to Skype. I'm lazy. Often I use my cell phone (a Blackberry 7230 from RIM) to make phone calls because all my contacts are one click away. It's almost instantaneous. I don't like dialing 10 digits on a desktop phone. If Skype could give me one click access to all my contacts, my usage would skyrocket.

I still hope Google will acquire Skype, as I blogged months ago. I can't imagine a more distruptive combination.

Ross Mayfield, CEO of SocialText was quoted in Business Week this week as saying that "the infrastructure costs [for a startup company] are a tenth of what they used to be." I wholeheartedly agree.

Turning Comments Back On

paulballen — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 20:13:27 -0700

A few months ago I had to turn off the comments on my blog because the comment counter from Radio Userland was slowing the site down too much.

Today I've turned the comments back on. Radio Userland CEO Scott Young says the speed issue has been resolved. This is Radio is good blogging software in case you want to publish your own blog on your own domain. It costs only $39.95. Their tech support has always been responsive to me. (Thanks, Lawrence!) In addition to comments, I'm going to be adding a Blog Roll soon.

I can't wait to start reading your comments once again!

Art of the Start

paulballen — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 15:49:52 -0700

Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures has just published a great new book, The Art of the Start, that can help entrepreneurs skip all the time-wasting steps that most people tell you to take (like how many days and weeks do you and your staff need to agonize over getting your mission statement just perfect?) and get right into creating products and selling them to customers.

It's the perfect approach to starting a web company or a software company. It's Extreme Entrepreneuring. Just do it. Skip all the unnecessary steps and start serving customers. Over time you can perfect your products with feedback from your early adopters.

I'm only into it three chapters so far, but I'm going to recommend this to all first time entrepreneurs. I heard Guy speak in Salt Lake City about 10 years ago, and then I heard him again at Harvard Business School's Cyberposium a few years ago. He's one of my favorite speakers.

iPowerweb

paulballen — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 09:30:56 -0700

iPowerweb claims 240,000 professional accounts for it's $7.95 per month web hosting service. One of our companies, Utah Angel Network, hired a developer to build our web site and he prefers iPowerweb. So we're going to give it a try. Here's a link:

iPowerWeb Hosting / $7.95/Mo / 500 Megs of Space, 30 Gigs of Transfer, 300 Emails + Free Setup & Free Domain - CLICK HERE!

IE Blocks Download of Google Desktop Search

paulballen — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 22:10:49 -0700

I'm trying to download the new Google Desktop search and got this message from Internet Explorer:

"To help protect your security, Internet Explorer blocked this site from downloading files to your computer. Click here for options."

I'm sure they aren't targeting Google specifically. I think I got an update recently from Microsoft that makes me approve any site that tries to download software. I can add them to a list of approved sites.

I just thought this was funny.

What wasn't funny was getting 2 errors from Google (page not found) when I first clicked on desktop.google.com and then again when I clicked on Download. Backtracking and trying again solved the problem, but I'm not accustomed to getting web server errors from Google.

Kanoodle Responds to My Concerns

paulballen — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 19:26:50 -0700

I recently complained about being overcharged by Kanoodle, since when I signed up for their contextual advertising service I didn't know what the per click charge was going to be. I was contacted by Kanoodle and they treated me well and resolved my concerns. They told me if I had logged in earlier I would have seen the higher per-click charges. They were right. I should have been tracking my campaign every day. I appreciate the way they resolved my issue, however, and plan to continue using Kanoodle.

LinkedIn closes $10m funding

paulballen — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 21:25:06 -0700

LinkedIn.com just closed a $10 million funding round. In this InternetNews.com article, the company's execs talk a bit more about their revenue potential by providing features to power users. I find such value in this service that as I've said before, I'll pay fees for it, no question.

Press Releases and Strategy

paulballen — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 10:10:41 -0700

I advise CEOs to personally craft their company strategy. My favorite way to do this is not to write a 20 page document that no one will ever read, but simply to make a list of all the press release headlines they hope to issue during the next two years. What key announcements do they hope to make? Partnerships? Key Hires? Revenue Growth Announcements? Funding Events?

You can do this in a few hours.

One exercise Stephen Covey uses is to have you write your own obituary--what do you hope is said about you when you pass on?--and then you try to live your life accordingly.

For a CEO, mentally creating the plans of the company they are building is critical. But I find it very difficult to get CEOs to take the time to do this. I did this for Ancestry.com in 1998 and it is absolutely amazing six years later to see how many of the announcements that I envisioned actually happened. Most happened a few years later than I predicted (and the IPO still hasn't happened!), but having the strategy on paper really helped me make significant contributions to the company.

Many startup CEOs do not have a well thought-out strategic plan. (It takes a ton of competitive and market research to know with certainty how you should proceed.) And many startup companies are very, very poor at telling their story through press releases.

In the internet era, you can consistently tell your story through press releases on your web site, without paying fees to PR agencies. As a startup you don't need to pay $10,000 per month to have an agency write press releases and use their media contacts to get story placements. Unless of course you can afford this.

But for a few hundred dollars per month you can have releases written for your web site and for distribution on free press release services, including PRweb.com which gets indexed by Google News every day.

Press releases are useful for informing potential employees, business partners, customers, and investors about your company's story. Usually when I want to learn about a company, I go to their web site and check their press releases. In a few minutes I can learn a great deal about them. If they don't have any press releases, I assume they are a tiny player. Is that what you want people to think of your company?

I'm working on a new company that will help startups create their PR-based strategic plan and then issue regular releases for a very low monthly fee. I'd like every Infobase Ventures company to sign up for this service. I know dozens of other small businesses that need this. Then, when companies grow big enough, they can graduate to a real PR agency and tell the story widely through the press in addition to the direct PR on their own site.

Please contact me if you'd like to learn more about this new low-cost PR service. (One good way to reach me is paulballen "at" yahoo.com)

PRGuy.com

paulballen — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 04:23:57 -0700

I think SearchGuy.com should rename itself PRGuy.com. These guys went public in May through a reverse merger and have a decent

When Will Google Pass Microsoft?

paulballen — Fri, 08 Oct 2004 06:45:35 -0700

I blogged an outrageous prediction a few months ago (it ended up being my most popular blog ever) that Google would pass Microsoft in market cap within 10-15 years. Yesterday I saw a CSFB report showing Google's revenue will grow from $2.9 billion in 2004 to $4.3 billion in 2005. Meanwhile, Yahoo Finance shows Microsoft with revenues of $32 billion in 2003 and $36 billion in 2004.

So I had to do a little spreadsheet exercise. If Microsoft's revenue continues to grow at 12.5% and Google's at 48.28% then when will Google pass Microsoft in revenue?

Answer. In 2013

Google would have revenue of $100 billion compared to Microsoft's $92 billion.

But this is silly, because we all know Google's revenue won't keep growing by about 50% per year. But I would also project that with all the competition from Open Source and elsewhere, that Microsoft may not maintain a 12.5% growth rate. In fact, is it possible that their revenues may some day actually decline!

I'm working on a paper that documents all the business model advantages that Google has over Microsoft and others for that matter. I'm extremely bullish on Google. Someone speculated recently that Hotmail is dying and someone else calculated that Google's revenue from embedded email ads could pass its revenue from search ads.

Some of my own Google ad campaigns show a lower "cost per sale" from Google's contextual ads than from their search results ads, which has surprised me.

I'm a huge fan of the way Google's founders control voting rights over all other share holders, because I think it will allow them to run the company more smartly than other publicly traded companies, including Microsoft. They can always make decisions that are best for the long term.

Blogging Software Provider Lands $10 Million

paulballen — Thu, 07 Oct 2004 15:35:09 -0700

Six Apart, the company that developed Moveable Type and TypePad has landed a $10 million second round of funding.

Grow Utah Ventures Funds Local Company

paulballen — Wed, 06 Oct 2004 23:10:14 -0700

I have heard about a new angel investment group in Ogden called Grow Utah Ventures. Now I see that they have funded a Utah company, Primary Intelligence. It is good for entrepreneurs and for Utah's economy to see early stage angel investors that are willing to step up to the plate and make bets. Let's hope they get some big hits.

Overstock Takes on eBay

paulballen — Wed, 06 Oct 2004 17:17:12 -0700

Overstock has announced that it is taking on eBay in the auction space. This is a tall order for anyone--it would be for a company the size of Microsoft--but I don't want to underestimate Patrick Byrne and the Overstock team because of their passion and drive to succeed. The stock has been doing quite well this year and this announcement shouldn't hurt.

I believe Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne is speaking at BYU on Friday. I just found out my brother Curt Allen (CEO of Agilix) and my nephew Richard Culatta are also on the program. If you live in Utah, you won't want to miss BYU's eBusiness Day.

Infobase Media Corp Closes Series A Investment Round

paulballen — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 15:08:32 -0700

Infobase Media Corp, parent of LDSAudio.com, today announced that it has raised $1.15 million to develop content offerings (electronic text, audio and video) for multiple markets.

The company has a great team, a great vision of aggregating content and delivering it in multiple media formats to online consumers. The company has already begun publishing religious content in text and audio formats; additional niche markets will be announced later.

Audible.com has experienced a tremendous run in their stock value over the past two years. I bought Audible.com at around $0.50 in the summer of 2003. The stock is now trading for more than $19 per share. (Unfortunately I sold mine a long time ago, after locking in very nice returns.)

There are a growing number of successful digital content companies. Infobase Media Corp. hopes to be among them.